TOWARD A MORE NON-FUNGIBLE UNION

“We designed The Venice Music Collective as a home for those who truly love music,” reads a post from Venice co-founders Troy Carter and Suzy Ryoo describing their latest venture. “We want the collective to be the community we wish we had when we were first entering the music business.”

Carter, Ryoo and team are using their Venice Distribution platform as the foundation for a new “token-gated” community (meaning the purchase of an NFT is a prerequisite for membership). They believe the community they are developing—and the tools to which that community will have access—will create a new, more equitable model for independent artists.

Members will have entrée not only to Venice distro but also community resources (including its virtual aerie on the Discord multimedia networking platform), analytics and other data tools, “gear share” (i.e. equipment to create video and other content), access to communal creative/recreational space (including studios and a sanctuary of chill at the secluded Venice House), sync opportunities and even participation in the proceeds from sales of the aforementioned NFTs.

But beyond the specific offerings, it’s clear that Venice’s larger goal is to create the circumstances around which a vibrant music community will constellate and expand. They say they’re already succeeding.

“The industry is not broken,” reads the Carter-Ryoo post, which argues that inequality is baked into the status quo. “You cannot fix a system that is working as intended. You have to rebuild it from the ground up.”

For more information, go here.